Sixteen years ago, when Lucy Merritt was a child, her CIA operative parents were killed while on a covert mission in the small Himalayan Kingdom of Nhala. Still fighting nightmares and debilitating fears, Lucy is content with her peaceful life as a document restoration expert for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. But her knowledge of Nhala, its language and her childhood friendship with its princess make her a prime asset for a new CIA mission. General Changa, the power-obsessed leader of the royal Nhalan army, is plotting to become king. To bankroll his ambitious plan he uses the kingdom’s assets to enable a terrorist organization to develop a lethal, bio-terror weapon.

Lucy’s former guardian, now the CIA Deputy Director of Operations, partners her with Captain Mike Shafer of the U.S. Army’s Tenth Mountain Division to gain access to the palace at Nhala and thwart the general’s ambitious plan. Lucy is commissioned by General Changa to restore an “ancient” document he’s had falsified to portray him as the prophesied king of Nhala. And once he forces Princess Paso to marry him his endeavor to become king will be complete. Changa considers the deaths of millions of Jews and Americans at the hands of the terrorists as merely collateral damage.

With a sophisticated bio-terror weapon in jihadist hands and national security at stake, Lucy and Mike travel to Nhala on a dual-purpose mission—to stop Changa and locate a flash drive leading to the bio-agent and the jihadists. Fast-paced action drives this entirely plausible plot and the threat of imminent catastrophe ratchets-up the urgency in this complex Jennings page-turner.